The sale is expected to enable EMX to gain up to 6% equity interest in Bayrock Resources

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A piece of Ni about 3 cm in size. (Credit: Materialscientist (talk)/Wikipedia)

EMX Royalty has signed an option agreement to sell five battery metals projects in Sweden to Swedish Nickel, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bayrock Resources.

The five battery metals projects include Kukasjarvi project, Notträsk project, Vuostok project, Fiskelträsk project, and Skogträsk project.

The announcement follows EMX’ recent acquisition of Net Smelter Return (NSR) royalty on the Caserones copper-molybdenum mine, located in northern Chile for $34.1m.

Under the terms of the agreement, Swedish Nickel is eligible to acquire 100% interests in any or all of the projects through the issuance of cash or shares to EMX.

In exchange for the projects, EMX will receive A$62,184 ($45,577) in cash, up to 6% equity interest in Bayrock, annual advance royalty payments, and 3% NSR royalty.

EMX stated: “The Agreement with Swedish Nickel/Bayrock represents another example of EMX’s execution of the royalty generation aspect of its business model.”

The nickel-copper projects are located in north-eastern Sweden in the Fennoscandian Shield, which hosts several nickel deposits in Sweden, Finland and western Russia.

They contain drill-defined zones of nickel-copper sulfide mineralisation developed in and around mafic to ultramafic intrusions, known as the magmatic sulfide-style mineralisation.

The zones of mineralisation are also variably enriched in cobalt and platinum-group-elements (PGE), key metals used in current battery technologies.

Occurrences and deposits of the projects were discovered in the 1970’s and 1980’s, with only limited and incomplete histories of follow-up exploration.

EMX has started exploration programmes for nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE deposits in the Nordic countries in 2016, the times when the battery metal prices were low.

The Kukasjarvi project has a defined historical mineral resource and twelve historical diamond holes were drilled for a total of 2,400 metres.

The Notträsk project contains nickel copper mineralisation that was discovered in the 1970’s, while nickel-copper mineralisation at Vuostok was discovered in the 1940’s.

The Vuostok project is  located in the Skelleftea mining region of Sweden.